Video shows lemur picking its nose so deep it touches the back of its throat, then eats it — behavior previously unknown to science

An aye-aye caught on camera picking its nose next to a diagram of how far the finger can go deep into its head.

Anne-Claire Fabre/Renaud Boistel

• A video shows a lemur picking its nose, a behavior never before observed by scientists. 
• The animal shoves one of her long agile fingers all the way up her nose to her throat. 
• An accompanying study found 12 species of primates pick their nose, using fingers or tools.

A video shows a lemur picking its nose with an enormously long finger, a behavior never before spotted by science. 

The video shows Kali, an aye-aye living in the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, shoving her 3-inch long finger all the way up her nose, taking it out again, and licking it. 

The aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar, is known for its disheveled look and its disproportionately long finger which it uses to hunt and dig up bugs from tree bark. 

"This was not just a one-off behavior but something that it was fully engaged in," study author Prof Anne-Claire Fabre from the University of Bern said in a press release.

A picture of a juvenile aye-aye shows its long slender fingers, which are used to hunt for bugs — and for nose picking.

AP

"I wanted to know: where is this finger going?" she told the BBC, adding: "is it inserting it into its brain? It was so weird and seemed impossible."

To understand more about the behavior, scientists did a CT scan of the lemur's skull. The findings of the study were presented in a paper published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Zoology.

A head CT shows how far up the nose the finger actually goes.

Renaud Boisel

The scan, above, showed the lemur's finger going all the way up its nose to the back of its throat.

"We were shocked," study author Roberto Portela Miguez, Senior Curator in Charge of mammals at the Natural History Museum, London, said in a press release

Humans aren't the only primates poking at their snot

"When I first saw this video, I was really struck by the nose picking," Roberto said, adding: "I've never heard of anything like it before outside of humans."

To understand whether this behavior is widespread, the scientists looked back through previously published studies to spot examples of primate nose-picking.

They found the behavior in 12 species, some of which use tools to get at their snot, per the study. 

Some, like Kali, were spotted nose-picking in captivity so it's possible they might be acting differently than in nature.

Still, it prompts the question: if evolution is selecting this behavior, is eating your boogers actually good for you?

A child picks his nose.

Design Pics/Carson Ganci/Getty images

It's difficult to tell, because studies are far and few between, Fabre said.

"There is very little evidence about why we, and other animals, pick our noses. Nearly all the papers that you can find were written as jokes," she said in a press release.

Some suggest the mucus could be boosting the immune system, whereas others suggest it could help spread bad bacteria or damage your nose and cause nosebleeds. 

"We really think this behavior is understudied because it's really seen as a bad habit," Fabre told the BBC. 

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